As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is an information handling system (IHS). An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for such systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
In some IHSs, a speaker may be desired to output sound derived from audio data generated within an IHS. For example, a user may desire to listen to music, play a movie, play a game, or engage in any other activity that requires sound output. Thus, speakers for an IHS may be designed to convert digital data from the IHS into an acoustic form audible by a user.
Furthermore, certain challenges may exist in designing a speaker for use with an IHS such as accurately reproducing source audio in the speaker while balancing the speaker's cabinet (i.e., enclosure) size. In addition, certain inherent deficiencies in transducer design may create further hindrances. As such, speaker compensation techniques have been developed to address deficiencies in speaker performance by modifying or filtering the source audio data before it is reproduced and output by the speaker. Speaker compensation may be performed by dedicated hardware in the speaker or by software methods in an IHS. Dedicated hardware may increase the cost of speakers but may enable external or standalone speakers (i.e., not embedded in an IHS) to perform speaker compensation. Alternatively, software methods of performing speaker compensation in an IHS may provide cost savings. However, software methods may require the use of significant IHS resources such as the processor and/or memory.
In order to implement software methods for speaker compensation, knowledge of the speaker type, such as the model, performance capabilities, performance requirements, and any other information may be required to appropriately compensate for the desired speaker performance. For embedded speakers, gaining such knowledge may be straightforward since the speakers may be part of the IHS itself. For external speakers, however, certain difficulties may arise since the IHS may need to be aware of various different types of external speakers. For example, when an external speaker is coupled to an IHS, the IHS may need to locate an appropriate driver or any speaker compensation parameters unique to the external speaker in order to effectively filter audio data.
Current methods addressing these issues may include providing applications that enable a user to determine appropriate drivers and/or parameters associated with the external speaker. Consequently, these applications may require the user to have knowledge of the type of speaker being employed. Other methods may include storing various drivers and parameters in a storage device. These storage devices, however, may be separate from the IHS, thereby requiring an extra component and layer of communication in managing a speaker system with an IHS.
Thus, a need exists for methods and systems for a speaker management framework to automatically identify a speaker and provide speaker compensation.